The airport clip caught her in an orange hoodie, cracking up over the wild mushroom night she’d just written about in her memoir. She was 36, and it was the last time cameras would find her.
Panettiere was photographed arriving at LaGuardia on May 20, 2026, the day after her memoir “This Is Me: A Reckoning” hit shelves. Walking through the terminal with her publicist Kasey Kitchen, she waved off questions about the book’s most talked-about stories.
One was the first time she tried mushrooms, on a glamping trip with her “Scream 4” castmates hosted by Neve Campbell. She called it one of the funniest and most carefree experiences of her life. Asked whether “Stella,” a friend named in the book, was a real name, she laughed and said “Nope” before continuing on.
She died August 16 in Greenville, South Carolina, where she’d been temporarily staying. First responders found her in cardiac arrest at a residence and pronounced her dead at 2:32 p.m. An autopsy found no signs of trauma, and cause and manner of death remain pending toxicology.
In the months of promoting the memoir she talked about shaking off “darkness” and said she felt she had “a lot more life to live.”
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